


something other than the desperation

by nahco3



Series: Introductory Italian [2]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 20:29:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4934224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/pseuds/nahco3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Silva transfers to AC Milan at 30. He doesn’t want anything so much as to burn bridges and run, from everything. He hasn’t seriously dated anyone, ever; only David Villa and David Villa doesn’t really count.</p>
            </blockquote>





	something other than the desperation

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Introductory Italian](https://archiveofourown.org/works/469349) by [nahco3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/pseuds/nahco3). 



> this is a sort of prequel to Introductory Italian, from David Silva's perspective. I wrote that fic before Villa went to the MLS, so for the purposes of this fic, assume that he stayed at Barcelona a few more seasons, and retired there.
> 
> written for an anon on my tumblr. thanks for the prompt!

David Silva transfers to AC Milan at 30. He’s very tired, in kind of a bone-deep way. In constant, low grade pain, a steady 4 out of ten, 6 out of ten on bad days, he tells his doctors. He can’t decide when he should retire from the national team, if he should. No one gives him good advice, and he doesn’t want anything so much as to burn bridges and run, from everything. He hasn’t seriously dated anyone, ever; only David Villa and David Villa doesn’t really count.

It’s hard. Moving is hard, he doesn’t know Italian, they’re aren't any Spaniards on the team, only a couple of Spanish speakers at all. He’s lonely a lot, and he pretend he likes it. Loneliness means self-sufficiency, surviving loneliness means you don’t need anyone.

He’d rather be lonely than have David Villa ripping his heart out of his chest, anyway.

Silva meets Carlos on a Tuesday morning; mid-November. Dark and rainy day. Silva wakes up early and decides, on a whim, to go see Da Vinci’s Last Supper. He buys a ticket online and gets there early, before the tour buses, just as the museum is opening. It’s the off season, anyway. Just David Silva and a couple of nuns and another man, tall, broad-shouldered but carrying a little weight in the comfortable way that people who aren’t professional athletes do. He has a beard.

He’s sitting and sketching the fresco. Silva sits next to him and watches him. Silva feels invisible. He has for months, like a ghost inhabiting his own body. He hasn’t understood a word anyone’s said to him, only speaks to his translator, when spoken to. So Silva watches the man’s hands as he draws: his long fingers, the quick easy way he smudges his charcoal lines, deliberate. Silva watches for a long time as the man recreates the fresco in black and white, in miniature, transfixed. He’s surprised when the man looks up and meets his eyes, says something in Italian.

“Mi dispiace, non parlo italiano,” Silva says, which is most of the Italian he knows. 

“English?” the man asks, and Silva hears something in his accent there.

“A little,” Silva admits. “Spanish?” 

“Yes!” the man says. 

So it goes from there. His name is Carlos, he’s from Cordoba, he works at a big firm in Milan that designs environmentally conscious office buildings. 

They don’t exactly date - Silva isn’t in the position to date anyone, and Carlos travels for work almost as much as Silva does: to Rotterdam and Shanghai and Austin and Johannesburg and Stockholm. He sends Silva postcards, in neat miniature capital letters. Thinking of you; have you ever gone to see the Rembrandt’s in Amsterdam; do you remember how the sunrise looks over the veldt?

Silva has been around the world and never left his hotel room and the bus and the pitch. He remembers the sunrises in South Africa all too well, he remembers everything about that World Cup, the way you remember the slow death of a loved one, in agonizing detail. The kind of thing you dream about and wake yourself up crying. That was the summer of the transfers, the World Cup Silva won and didn’t earn. That was the way Silva learned how much it hurt; to get everything you ever wanted, but twisted back on itself. 

Carlos doesn’t know about that, though. He doesn’t know much about Silva’s past, because Silva doesn’t tell him. When they’re both in Milan, Silva goes over to Carlos’s apartment. They watch movies and eat the carefully pre-made meals the club nutritionist makes for Silva. They have sex and it’s fine. Silva never really knew sex could be that: just something your body does, like run or sleep, something you like but not something that takes you apart, remakes you, leaves you haunted and hunted.

Carlos falls in love with Silva in the spring and summertime, sends texts and cute little emails. Silva meets his family, without really wanting to. He gives Carlos’s older brother and Carlos tickets to the Milan derby. 

Carlos is patient, he says he can wait for Silva to be sure. He knows Silva’s been through a lot - “I can only guess how hard it must be, David," he says, and he means being a gay footballer.

It’s not that hard, Silva thinks. Being gay, at least. Silva could endure so much, if only there was someone to make it worth it. If Villa had wanted to, Silva would have stared down all the _tifosi_ in Italy. 

And then, one day, at the height of summer, David’s phone buzzes. 

_Hows it going?_ , David Villa asks, like it costs him nothing to ask that question.

 _Not bad. Preseason stuff is starting soon so i’ll be back in milan._ Silva texts back, before he can think better of it. Not sure if David wants that detail, not sure if he deserves to know anything about Siva’s life, but the instinct is there, after all these years, unburied. Opening up to Villa is easier than opening a vein, and feels about the same.

 _Cool. You going anywhere good for preseason?_ David replies, quick. Silva sits down, beyond trying to control himself. 

_The US. Should be ok, at least the flights shorter than asia_

_Thats chill. I remember how much you hated long flights_ , Villa texts back. 

“Fuck,” Silva says out loud, to his empty room. It hurts his chest, it makes his fingers shake, this stupid, wasted, buried love. He can’t do this again. 

_Not as much as you did :)_ he texts back.

They go on like that. Silva doesn’t think of Carlos as he does it. It’s ugly but it’s true: it’s not disloyal because Villa pre-dated Carlos by almost a decade, because Silva’s loyalties have never been divided. It’s always been David. 

He and Carlos sit and drink red wine and Carlos asks question after question, trying to draw Silva out of his silence. How was preseason, did you like America? 

“Did you go to that art gallery my friend recommended?”

Silva’s phone buzzes. “We didn’t have time,” he says, typing a response back to Villa.

“Who are you texting?” Carlos asks, and maybe he’s annoyed, but he’s always so mild, Silva can never tell. Carlos talks and talks and never says how he feels; always waiting and watching Silva. It drives Silva crazy.

“David Villa,” Silva says, and that, right there, is the most honest he’s ever been with Carlos, and Carlos doesn’t even realize.

Three days later, Silva’s in the locker room, changing back into his street clothes. His translator is gone for the day and Silva lets the chatter wash over him; the shit talk and the complaints, he can’t understand a word of them, but he knows the script, anyway. He’s heard it a thousand times before. It’s a relief to be exempt from it, finally, not to have to think of a single lie because no one asks him questions.

There’s a text from David. 

_I’m thinking about moving to Milan._

Silva’s chest constricts, his whole body feels disconnected. It’s an adrenaline rush, beyond categorization as happiness or terror: it simply is, something to be accepted and endured, like the tides.

 _Call me when you have the chance_ he texts back, and then toggles over to Carlos’s name in his phone, tries to muster up some empathy. 

_We should talk_ he writes, but his mind is already in the future, already on David. What if he comes? What if he doesn’t? What does he want? 

It doesn’t matter, of course. Silva will be waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts  
> from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big  
> and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out  
>  _You will be alone always and then you will die._  
>  So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog  
> of non-definitive acts,  
> something other than the desperation.
> 
> from Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out, Richard Silken


End file.
